That's the problem of leading a company based on your shares value and not on what's best for your company, and it's a problem that affects not only the videogame industry.

And I was just naming other examples of successful single-player franchises that have given its publishers tens if not hundreds of millions through the years.

Except EA isn't making that.  They're making games that cost MORE to make than most singleplayer games would if they were efficient in even the most remote sense of the word in hopes of creating a game that will give them endless ammounts of money.  

People keep saying they get this business move but from a more indepth perspective it makes no sense.  They were faced with rising development costs but rather than do the conventionally wise thing - focus on becoming more efficient - they decided to *accelerate* development costs, creating these sprawling, nebulous games that they can plug in endless ammounts of DLC, microtransactions, etc.  

Basically, they found themselves unwittingly sitting at a a high rollers table and in their panic...they ran to an even HIGHER rollers table.  These games actually constitute a higher risk in many instances because they've allowed costs to balloon even further and are betting it all on microtransactions.

You forget that it is also EA who are the one's designing the games. EA is just as much of a game developer as they are a game publisher ... (For all the less than ideal decisions they make, they still make good games and that's what should truly count regardless of how much they interfere)

And you don't know what the final game could be like either so don't assume that the game will be set in just that specific path when plans change all the time as a game is continuously developed ... 

EA the parent company does not design games.  Their subsidiaries, which are made of developers, do.  The corporate side of EA is notorious for meddling in the design off games.  Sims 4, Sim City, Dead Space 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter (and other MoH games), for ages EA has been known to mandate design decisions for major franchises that make no sense from a game design standpoint and are often consumer hostile.  And nearly every time they do that, the result is a dead franchise and later a dead studio.  

And given they made no mention of the game being of poor quality but *specifically* referenced really long term player engagement, broad design, and specifically referenced as apparently undesirable elements the linear nature of it and it's singleplayer, story driven focus (which incidentally is what Visceral is good at and what they haven't been allowed to just *make* since Dead Space 2 to my knowledge), I would be astonished if it doesn't come out as I have descirbed or some variant thereof.  EA has been trying to push their version of "games as a service" for years.  Given the lootbox fiasco in Battlefront 2, it doesn't seem like they are ready to give up on that angle.  Unless perhaps games using that model start bombing hard, then they may run scared back to the original design.  But then, I would be more inclined to say they just axe the whole thing.

And how does that make EA's internal studios any more different than it's current identity ? The idea of being both a game developer AND a corporation are not mutually exclusive ...

Just how does one dissociate from the other when they both work for the same firm ? EA are not just making these design decisions as publisher but they also do it as a game developer as well and that's the cold hard truth ...

Also, do you really think that a game company operates in such a binary fashion ? Where would game directors or producers fall in since since they both handle design decisions and corporate work ? 

Nothing has been promised about the game so far and we haven't seen footage yet so nothing could be said about the game itself so far ...